One of the best-selling real time strategy franchises returns with Age of Empires Online, Microsoft's first title to utilize a free-to-play model. The game is no longer playable, as its servers were shut down in July 2014.

So who paid for a Season Pass?

I am literally looking at the menu to buy it but god damn if it doesn't seem expensive.... 9200 points, math wise if you don't have any spare points laying around...that comes to £80.75 (sorry I've only looked at UK pricing). Stacked up over time it isn't too bad. You'd pay £54 for 6 months of WoW not including the price of the box....only difference is WoW has been out a lot longer and you know what you're getting. Then theres still Starcraft 2....but thats a slippery slope. If I'm going to pay for this game the season pass seems the way but god damn if I'm not paranoid about it simply sinking within 3 months.

Anyone else got one and care to persuade me further? As this game seems to hit a wall on F2P from what most people are saying.

If you really like aoeo it doesn't seem like a terrible investment to me. Means you basically get the "entire" game with all the content added over that period of time, whereas with most F2P games it will cost you hundreds of dollars to get everything.

At the same time, you're getting a lot of stuff you probably don't really need. Do you really need to have all of the premium civs? You're probably going to stick with just one civ or two anyway. I'm sure they'll also add a lot of content that not everyone will be interested in too.

Also keep in mind that they will have promotions on things in the future. They'll be discounting things and adding bundle packs over time.

$19.99 for even just one premium civilization is such a freaking rip off. I bought Civ 5 for $24.99 for sale on Steam and that game could last forever technically and is just as deep from everything I've seen. I went to investigate how much a premium civ would be since I heard them keep mentioning it in the podcast and the quick look and it costs $19.99...for one premium civ? Seems extremely lame to me.

For $100 you could be playing both SC2 and Civ5 without any worry. Even games like League of Legends give you the ability to earn in game points to buy characters with without spending any money at all...

I reinstalled SC2 and played a few games since creating this thread, so far I've not lost a single match...don't think I'll be paying for premium considering this has cost me nothing and given me a bigger buzz

Why not see all of what the F2P option has to offer before throwing down 100 dollars? I was considering buying a civ, but I kept playing and am starting to not like it as much. 100 dollars is a lot of money for only one game.

@Sammo21: I replied to you in another thread, but just to clarify again here.. Comparing the civilizations here to the ones in Civ 5 isn't really fair. These are totally unique factions, similar to what you get in SC2, complete with their own individual campaigns. Starcraft 2 came with three factions and only one campaign and that was $60, so getting four factions and four campaigns for $100 isn't really a "rip off".. It just doesn't sound very appealing and they do a poor job of explaining exactly what you get.

I just think the pricing structure is odd. I'd have liked to be able to buy the civilizations for use in matches, without having to worry about progressing them through the campaign. I wonder if more purchasing options like this will become available later, it would certainly make the game more appealing.

I just had to check if they are silly enough to use 1$ = 1€. Sure enough in Euro zones it's 99,99€, which converts to 144$. So business as usual...This is "slightly" more than I'm willing to spend to a game, especially this game. :(

The problem no one has mentioned about all these pricing models is that the market has much less direct input over how quickly or slowly the prices slide down. Traditional distribution models (both digital and physical) are vulnerable to price sliding which guarantees that various groups of people buy at various prices as it slides down to cheaper and cheaper. Maybe I'm wrong and they'll put their bundles and pricing on sale but there's no guarantee whereas that's an innate rule of the market that traditional games function under.

I have no intention to buy anything until the prices become slightly more reasonable. It's not an expansive persistent world like an MMORPG, so them charging over $16 a month when they have no where near the overhead seems unreasonable to me.

I'm very interested in the Celt civ, and would consider it if it's $10, but $16.66 per month for 6 months, up front, when you have no idea what their release schedule is, seems ridiculous.

I cannot even believe people would even consider getting this. And as far as I know this doesn't even grant you access to everything during those 6 months. There's still stuff left where you got a 30% reduction on... duh.

Starcraft II: WoL alone has probably infinitely more content already than AoEo. Not completely comparable but yeh. That game costs what 50-60$.

And some people here actually think paying 100$ to get [b]some, not all[/b] content within the next few months is actually worth it!?! How the fucking ffuck!?! Does this game even provide more (valid) content than AoE 2? I highly doubt it. Because that game had a crapton of different races. I doubt many RTS players care that much for that overall RPGish leveling up structure, I know I don't.

@MysteriousFawx: Your best bet is to play the free version, see how you like it, then consider shelling out for some of the DLC.

If you're paying for any of the addons using Microsoft Points, you can save yourself a chunk by buying the points online - 2100 points will set you back £14.97 from Amazon UK for example, so that 9200 point sting would set you back around £65 or so, better than the £79.99 they're asking for in the marketplace.

Of course, there are other deals if you don't want to spend so much money and just grab premium civs too - you can nab the two premium civs, plus the booster pack for 3600 points, £25.66 using the Amazon pricing. Not sure how long that launch bundle will stick around though.

just a egipt premium for me, i didnt like what i played of greece up to lvl 7ish. And to be quite honest, the game has already paid for itself... i must have like 20hours in it already easily (im sure its more, Steam isnt tracking :( ) and im really liking it. Dunno if ill get to 40, especially since like Brad im a very slow player, i build huge bases/defenses/armies and then complete the missions, but yeah... totally worth the 20euros

also, im not sure that people realise how long it takes to get to lvl 40, im 14 myself, and most i see being talked about in general chat (which is a wow-level cesspool by the way) is 20-ish